Congenital heart disease and acquired heart disease are the leading non-infectious causes of death in children and adults, respectively. The long term objectives of this project are to understand the role of m-Bop proteins in cardiac myocyte differentiation and cardiac development. Bop encodes m-Bop proteins specifically expressed in the heart field and myotome of the mouse and chick early in development as well as in fetal and adult mouse myocardium and skeletal muscle. m-Bop proteins contain both a MYND domain, shown in other proteins to recruit histone deacetylases (HDACs), and a S-ET domain, shown elsewhere to affect chromatin structure, sometimes through intrinsic histone methyltransferase (HMT) activity. Both activities can repress gene expression through epigenetic effects involving chromatin modifications. Targeted inactivation of Bop in mice leads to death at embryonic day 10 (El0 0), and hearts of Bop-null fetuses lack a right ventricle and have abnormal cardiomyocyte differentiation. Absence of the transcription factor, Hand2, from the heart primordia of E7 75 Bop-null embryos suggests a role for m-Bop in an early gene expression cascade that leads to right ventricular development. m-Bop has repressive activity in vitro due to recruitment of HDACs, and it physically interacts directly or indirectly with HDACs. m-Bop interacts with skNAC, a heart- and skeletal muscle-specific transcription factor, and co-localizes with skNAC during myogenesis in vitro and during cardiogenesis in vivo. m-Bop also interacts with MITR, a co-repressor of myogenesis, and HRT2, a heart ventricle-specific transcription factor. We plan to test the hypotheses that 1) m-Bop is a cardiac-specific regulator of chromatin modifications early in cardiomyocyte development and functions through direct and indirect interactions with DNA-binding proteins, and 2) that m-Bop and skNAC interact in a physiologically meaningful manner during myogenesis in vitro and cardiac development in vivo. Specific Aims are 1) To define the mechanisms by which the MYND, SET and other domains of m-Bop promote alterations in chromatin structure and regulate transcription, and 2) To determine the biological significance of m-Bop/skNAC interaction and the role of skNAC during cardiogenesis. These studies are relevant to mechanisms that may underlie ventricular hypoplasia in congenital heart disease. That m-Bop appears to specifically affect heart development by promoting histone modifications and hence chromatin reorganization in a lineage-specific fashion places it among a very few proteins known to operate in this way. This gives a broader relevance to the mechanisms to be investigated in the proposed studies.